an adult woman, and, where a husband is in view, that man's wife: one word for both
This is the ordinary Greek word for a grown woman, and it is also the ordinary Greek word for a wife. Greek had no separate word for "wife": a married woman was simply the woman of a particular man. So one word does the work of two English words, and only the surrounding sentence decides which one a translator writes.
Readers of the Greek watch for concrete signals that a wife is meant:
- a possessive, so that she is the woman of some named man
- the word "the" in front of her, marking one particular woman rather than women in general
- a word meaning "one's own" set beside the husband
- pairing with the matching word for a man (ἀνήρ), which carries the very same double range
Where those signals are absent, the plain sense "woman" stands. This is why English versions part company in the hardest chapters: through much of 1 Corinthians 11 the ESV prints "wife" while the NRSV prints "woman" for the same Greek word, and the ESV's own footnote grants that the term may mean either one, depending on context.
Two further uses round out the picture. The word is used to speak to a woman directly, where English has no comfortable equivalent, since "Woman," sounds curt to us but was courteous or at least neutral in Greek. And in the visions of Revelation a single woman can stand for a whole people or a whole city, faithful or corrupt.
Nuances
The force of the vocative γύναι when Jesus addresses his mother (John 2:4; 19:26).
- majorityThe address is in no way derogatory, but it excludes the filial relationship and signals a certain detachment; a child addressing a mother would normally use μῆτερ.; A. Oepke, "γυνή," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St John; Eleanor Dickey, Greek Forms of Address: From Herodotus to Lucian
- minorityThe address conveys respect and nothing further; no distancing should be read into it.; Henry Alford, The Greek Testament